


Loose Change and A Looser Hold

by cockatoo



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Anal Sex, Bottom Newt, Consensual Infidelity, Dominance, Gay Sex, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, No Fluff, No Lube, No Romance, One Night Stands, One Shot, Out of character characters, Playing it Straight, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Prostitute!Newt, Prostitution, Referenced violence, Self-Hatred, Sex for Money, Smut, Top Minho, safe sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-17 02:41:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4649145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cockatoo/pseuds/cockatoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Minho wasn’t looking for love or companionship, just a warm enough body to fill the bottomless void of his desire. But Newt, Newt’s only looking for the money. And that’s as perfect as things get in the real world, and apparently that’s all they needed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loose Change and A Looser Hold

The night was cold, and to Newt cold nights meant fewer customers. His main demographic were married middle aged men and apparently the winter chill was just enough to stop them from leaving there warm homes and happy families. Most of them were always indecisive, picking him up and making small talk before addressing the obvious elephant in the room. Some customers would just fuck him, barely wait for him to close the car door before forcing him down and undressing him. Thomas told him he liked the first type better, but Thomas was a hopeless romantic so Newt never did add much weight to his argument. Because Newt was here for the money and both sorts paid well enough.

“It’s a slow night,” Thomas tells him, his smile far too bright for a man dressed in shorts in the English winter air.

Newt’s too tired to answer, tired of working, tired of standing, tired of living. Newt needs something, something that can never articulate itself because he isn’t sure what it is nor if it exists. He needs a jolt in his reality, needs spontaneity and excitement. Instead he gets a crap waitering job that pays minimum wage and the hopeless and daily fate of selling his body to strangers.

Newt can’t reply because he’s forgotten how to.

“Hopefully the next one should be the last for me,” Thomas continues, “I’ve had a good month, had hot water and all.”

The blonde nods, his water had been cold, his fridge had been empty and his landlord was annoyed at his constant excuses. ‘Tomorrow,’ Newt promised and the next day he’d say the same thing and again and again. The last few months had been alright, but this month had been as cold and unforgiving as the weather. His landlord came to his house, screaming and waving red coloured letters so Newt had sucked his dick. The man had left with a smile on his face. The water was cold when he tried to wash himself clean.

Rock bottom had always been an overused phrase, but Newt didn’t know what else to call it, words had lost their meaning from where he stood, cold and lonely and waiting, always waiting.

It takes longer than normal for a car to roll up to the street corner where Newt and Thomas stand, its speed cautious and defensive as all things were at this time of night. Newt notices the shiny metal, the expensive make and fresh tires. Whoever was in the car was rich, and Newt hoped he was looking for a rent boy and not directions.

Newt won’t openly admit that he blocks Thomas view of the car, standing up looking lively as the car parks. But Thomas is looking at the pigeons that eat at the rubbish in the street, the hungry desperation in their feral eyes and oil coated feathers shines bright like the stars. Thomas thinks it’s very beautiful, while Newt can’t spare enough will to watch.

With precise and shaking steps, Newt walks up to the car. “Looking for some company?” He asks, the window rolling down to reveal a very handsome Asian man.

The man wears sunglasses in rebellion to the moonlight, nodding his head to the passenger seat to beckon the blonde inside. Newt does as instructed, keen to leave the harshness of the night air in favour of the far more inviting warmth of the car.

“What’s your name?” The man asks when he sits down, tone uneasy and brief.

“Angel,” He lies and the man is smart enough not to believe him. It was a performance if anything, Newt would read his lines as rehearsed and as his audience the man would nod and clap at the end. If there were a need for criticism, the man would have to wait till the show was over.

The handsome man meets his gaze, and Newt can make out the faint outline of his eyes beneath the glass. “How much?” He asks, reminding Newt of his place, a place of inferiority and defeat.

“Depends what you want. It’s £60 for a handjob, £100 for a blowjob and £350 for sex,” Newt recites from memory, “If you cum in or on me it’s an extra £30, £50 if you want me to swallow.” This was when Newt would state all the things he wouldn’t do, but now with a hollow stomach and the not so distant probability of ending up homeless, he decides to ignore his better judgements.

Newt’s eyes filter down to the man’s wallet, full of coloured notes that cause his hands to twitch.

The Asian man takes off his sunglasses, folding them up alongside his wallet. To say the man was handsome would be an understatement, if perfection were to exist the man would be the epitome of it, but Newt had long since disregarded such childish fantasies of beauty. He’s handsome and strong and everything he’s not supposed to be, the blonde doesn’t dare look his customer in the eye.

“So… do we just do it here or do we…?” The man’s nervousness tells Newt he’s never done this before, but the steady hold in his gaze says otherwise.

He looks like sin, and Newt’s seen it all before.

“I don’t mind,” Newt tells him despite the fact he does and dreams of the right of opinion often. “We could just do it in the car. Some guys like to get a hotel.”

They’re calling sex ‘it’, like it’s an object, a maybe or an if, like a baby whose gender hasn’t been determined or an indescribable stain on the bed sheets.

“Fine, a hotel then,” The man declares.

Newt likes that, he is very much in love with the idea. Sex is money, and money is food, and food is hope that someday sex will mean love and money will mean luxuries. Sex is a stranger fucking him against a flat surface, but at least in this case, the surface is a comfortable mattress that won’t bite into his knees or hips. This way he can lie back and think of the rolling hills of the English countryside and not the burn or the pain or the grunts.

Because this man, for whatever reason, decides a hotel would be the most suitable course of action, Newt has the unwanted pleasure of enduring the cold and distant silence of the car journey.

He looks to the man, young and handsome, to see him bite his lip and check the rear view mirror with an unnecessary amount of interest.

Somewhere, as if from the other side of a dream, a spark of familiarity bleeds itself across Newt’s memory.

“I’ve seen you before,” He tells the man, the man who looks at him with fear and anger and all the violent strokes of emotion in-between.

But Newt likes the emotion, he likes the electricity of uneasiness in the air. He likes the fact the man could kill him at any time, and he likes the thought that tells him he wouldn’t quite mind that.

“Yeah,” Newt tells him, “You’re that bloke of the telly, the runner.”

Minho Park was not just a bloke or a handsome man off the telly. Minho Park was a prodigy, the one all the kids in Newt’s estate wanted to be when they grew up. Newt likes the fact that Minho Park in just another man that wants to fuck him and would pay for the pleasure of doing so. He likes that Minho Park is sinful, that Newt’s seeing a part of the man that he and everyone else pretends doesn’t exist.

Minho Park no longer looks golden in the slanted darkness of the car. “Didn’t know your type had tellies,” Minho tells him.

A part of Newt wants to correct the man, the prodigy, the inspiration. But then he realises he is a type. He’s a prostitute because that’s what his box says, what his definition demands of him. Newt sells his body for money and that makes him the whore, the lesser, the damnation.

Another part of Newt’s insecurities wants to correct Minho’s judgements, tell him the idea of owning a television is nothing bizarre.  But once more he realises that he only watches it because it makes him feel a little privileged. That he sees Minho Park and his gold medals and his charming smile in shockingly poor quality (one that was never meant to be associated with such a grace and talent as Minho Park), before turning it off and thinking of the bills and the food and the sex.

Newt doesn’t reply to his comment because he can’t think of anything smart or relevant to say, and if he isn’t being smart or relevant he’s being nothing at all. And nothing doesn’t pay the bills or suck dick. So Newt does something by doing nothing.

The nothing ends when something happens, a clear precise ringing of Minho’s phone sounds itself into the car.

Minho Park has Bluetooth, he has a nice fancy car and people that like to call him.

The caller id tells Newt its Teresa who calls the runner and the bright flash of the man’s phone in the cup holder tells him she’s quite beautiful. The heart emoticon and kiss after her name tells Newt the pretty woman is his girlfriend.

“Is she your girlfriend?” Newt asks just for the sake of speaking, but he doesn’t need an answer. He just needs a something, even if that something is anger, is violence, is the gold medal athlete cutting him up in to portable pieces and throwing him in the Thames.

Newt vaguely wonders if his body would sink or float. Now he isn’t confident, but his money’s on sinking, because Minho Park seems to be a smart enough man who would weigh his corpse down with stones before he disposed of him. But dead men can’t make bets, and poor men can’t pay up.

Minho doesn’t answer so Newt speaks for himself.

“If I had a pretty girl like that at home I wouldn’t-“

“-Wouldn’t what?” Minho bites, “Wouldn’t sell your body like some low-life disease ridden whore?”

The blonde looks at Minho. “I didn’t mean it like that,” He tells the man, not quite knowing if it was the truth or just the fairy-tale style re-enactment of the events. Because if this was a story Minho would be his Prince Charming and Newt his lost Princess, this is Pretty Woman and Newt is the misunderstood protagonist and fate brought Minho to him so he can be saved. “I just thought maybe I could change your mind.”

Minho seems to ponder the idea, “Change my mind?”

“Yeah,” Newt tells him, his words ghosting themselves across the glass, clouding the face of his reflection. “You’ve never done this kind of thing before so I don’t see why you should start now.”

The handsome man shuffles, knuckles whitening under the harshness of his grip.

“It’s complicated,” is his reply, like it’s his relationship status _: ‘I’m in a relationship but I love fuckin other men too much to tell my girlfriend.’_

Minho turns back to him with the same sarcastic bravado, his smile is cruel yet inviting, beckoning the women to swoon and the cameras to showcase his victory. “Do you always try and put your customers off? You’ll be even poorer if you carry on like this. Although I don’t suppose they teach you about advertising on the street corner, do they?”

The words hurt like they’re supposed to. It makes Newt feel small and fragile. It’s then that Newt decides he doesn’t like Minho, and if he had any control over his fate, he’d never want to associate with the man again.

Teresa calls once more, but Minho doesn’t reply. She doesn’t leave a voicemail.

A few minutes later they pull up at a rundown motel, the paint decaying and tone uninviting. A few meters away sits a car, bobbing in a sinful and familiar way.

Newt waits for Minho to fuck him or failing that at least stab him of strangle the life from his willing body. But Minho Park does nothing at all.

He taps his fingers in parody of his own expectant mind-set, watching the rain drip mournfully down the window glass leaving little trails in their wake. The outside world drowning out with sound, the forceful pressure of the wind against the glass threatens to crack under the impact. Newt waits for it to happen, crosses his fingers in hopes of hearing the smash and to feel the splinters of glass cut into his skin. Newt wants to hear, wants to see and wants to bleed. Newt wants to feel human again.

Minho is ghostly white, eyes flickering and wincing at each second passing on his watch.

Newt wonders if he should reassure him, but it isn’t his place to comment. So he doesn’t.

“Three hundred and fifty pounds, right?” The man asks, like money is an issue and he needs to haggle with the blonde’s stubbornness. He flicks his fingers through his wallet, thousands and thousands of pound notes weighing down his movements.

“Right,” Newt replies.

The man is far taller, broader and stronger than the blonde, but there’s something, something else that gives Newt the power in authority. It could be his knowledge he supposes, the influence of routine he has over the man’s consciousness that makes Newt seem far larger than appearances deceive. Newt would smile if he could remember how to, if the pull on his cheeks didn’t feel like tearing agony. Whatever Newt does seems to calm Minho.

The man puts his sunglasses on once more and Newt can see his own reflection through them. He is the embodiment of poverty, hollow cheeks and sunken eyes looking mournful on the dull thinness of his bones. He supposes it’s fitting in a way, that Minho must have gone looking for someone who is far below him, someone desperate enough to cave into his demands. Newt wonders what he looks like from Minho’s eyes, if the man see’s the sickly colour of his skin and hunger in his eyes.

Minho’s lips, perfect and chapped, open in demand for Newt’s silence to end. And like all times before the atmosphere lends itself to the man, parting the heavy air to be graced by his words. “You need to go in,” Minho instructs, handing him a handful of paper notes.

Newt searches for the meaning, his uncertainty tightening his throat but the promise of money is enough to spike is interests. “Go where?” He asks.

“The hotel, I can’t have them seeing my face,” The man tells him, eyes searching round the car park in a rational paranoia, “If someone sees me the news would have a field day.”

The blonde smiles as he rests into the seat, eyes dazed with the anonymity of the night, “And what makes you think I wouldn’t just take the money and run?”

Minho turns to him with a casual breeze of force, “Because if you want to get enough money to feed your little drug addiction or whatever the fuck leads someone to sell their bodies, you’ll stick around.”

Newt laughs, the unsettling violence of the words fuelling the spontaneity he dreams of in the cold an vulnerable moments before he’s claimed by sleep. “I’m flattered you think I make enough money to buy drugs, I’m clean as a whistle,” He tells the man honestly.

“Then why are you here? Why do this?” Minho asks, “Is it fun?”

His voice is one of ignorance, like an angel asking the devil what it’s like to feel so dirty and sinful. Minho Park is curious, he wants to be taught what it’s like to love the pain and the grime and the darkness of the city, wants Newt to teach him what it’s like to hate himself.

And Newt so desperately wants to show him.

“No,” He replies, “I hate it because it’s who I am, that it’s all I amount to. I hate it because it’s everything to me, my income, my life, my future.” Minho’s eyebrows rise like he’s got the answer he was looking for.

“I hate it because it’s who I am, and who I’ll always be.”

Newt knows Minho wants to ask another question, wants to gush out words like vomit and demand that Newt clean it up. But despite what Newt thinks, Minho is strong enough to hold himself back.

He doesn’t say goodbye when he leaves the car and he certainly doesn’t apologise when he slams the door shut. For a moment Newt questions whether he’ll run, wonders where he’ll run to and exactly what he’s running from. It’s all just a tease though, like a bedtime story he reads himself to sleep with about the version of him who is brave and rich and powerful, the Newt that doesn’t fear the night or the sunrise, the one that casts his own shadow.

But Newt is the lesser, the whore, the damnation. And that’s the end of the story.

The hotel reception is cold, advertisements selling products Newt dreams one day he could afford. His nose wrinkles at the scent of mould and damp, the dying claims the building tells him as it begs for his help. The scent reminds Newt of home.

“Oi, what can I help you with?” The receptionist asks, makeup sharp and crude in a way that does nothing to hide her crooked features. Newt hates her London accent.

“Just a room with a double bed.”

She slaps her jaw audibly, small pink bubbles forming out her mouth until Newt can smell her strawberry bubble-gum. “You sure you can afford that?” The asks as she takes in his appearance.

Newt slaps the money down on the desk with a smile that feigns innocence.

“Room forty six is available,” She bites, passing him the key, “It’s eighty nine pounds per night.”

He gives her the sufficient amount and pockets the rest, sparing the woman a fake smile as he walks away. The automatic doors don’t open for him, leaving Newt to stand for a while waiting to be registered before surrendering to the manual task that drains the energy Newt lacked in the first place. He takes his time walking back to the car, watching Minho cower from invisible eyes with an amused smirk on his face. For his own enjoyment he taps Minho’s window, the man jumping out his seat.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” He curses at the blonde, straightening his fully ironed jacket and pushing his sunglasses further up his face.

Newt dangles the key just out of Minho’s reach, the silver shining in the moonlight with a highlighting importance.

“Where’s the change?” Minho asks, and Newt credits the ignorance that leads him to ask such a question.

The blonde tilts his head to the side, pretending to search the void of the night for an answer. “I don’t know what you’re on about,” Newt lies, willing the customer to call him out, for him to react with the anger Newt knows swims beneath the man’s covered eyes.

Minho grits his teeth, otherwise looking as perfect as always. “Right,” he dismisses.

Newt knows Minho will take it out on him after, for no deed goes unpunished and no sin goes unnoticed. Newt tallies up his own mistakes, the lies and failures. He tells himself that when he reaches infinity he’ll treat himself to something nice, embrace the entirety of himself he pretends is just a fraction, the side that’s everything his mother told him not to be.

 _‘Our father who art in heaven,’_ Newt repeats, _‘May you watch down on me with covered eyes, may you forgive yourself for making me the way I am. May you find it in your heart to make me better, to gift me what I dream of and what I pretend to exist.’_

Heaven, like always, is silent in reply. And Newt hates himself for asking.

They do not hold hands as they walk to the hotel, they do not loosen the holds of their own paranoia, looking like the strangers they are. Newt walks behind, following like he always does and watching the sky like it watches him. The light pollution from the city voids the sky of starts, the man-made greed for territory breeching the boundaries of space to leave what it always does, a nothingness that is so deep and so unforgiving that Newts eyes and words bounce right of, echoing throughout the hollow expanse of his reality.

Minho still somehow manages to look valiant, light in the darkness that has not yet claimed him, looking like the hero, the champion, the cherished.

Newt wonders about the stars, the realities and the science. He remembers reading a book a while back about the alternative universes and the promises of change. He hadn’t understood it of course, the paper being written by a doctor of science that was meant for the educated minds of the privileged and valued. But Newt still remembered it because unlike every other reader, Newt was listening. He wonders if maybe there was a Newt that made money the right way, a version of himself that was healthy and happy with love and companionship. He wonders if that version of Newt would fall in love with that version of Minho, or this Minho or any other Minho because the universe had destined itself to make Minho perfect everywhere. He imagines them kissing, the two of them holding hands or getting married, Newt smiling at the man he swore his life to.

The fantasy is tediously unrealistic, Newt laughs at his own joke why the real Minho turns around with a scowl. “What are you laughing at?” He snaps, and Newt wants to tell him about the paper and the stars and the others, but he knows his joke will fall on an idle mind that doesn’t care for such trivial things as humour.

Newt says nothing, Minho giving up and turning around with an uttered curse.

The automatic doors open for Minho, the room now light and warm and everything it wasn’t before. The two walk past the receptionist and march down the corridor of numbered rooms of perceptive meaning, appearing and disappearing from his view as Newt counts them in his head. They stop at room forty six, Minho opening the door with the key.

Their hotel room is small; a pot of dead roses sits in the corner of the room in a failed attempt to add a sense of nurture and compassion into the room. The scent of the roses in pungent, but Newt decides he likes it.

“Get on the bed,” Minho orders as he takes off his jacket.

Newt’s reminded of the sex, reminded of the money and the unfriendly welcome of his routine. Newt, like always, does as instructed, falling to the bed like a dead weight as the mattress creaks and wails at the presence of his body.

“Take of your clothes,” The man commands, but Newt this time isn’t listening.

“I like this room,” Newt tells him, looking small and vulnerable from his place on the bed.

“Take of your clothes,” He repeats.

“It’s nice, bigger than normal-“

“Now!” He demands.

Newt slips off his jacket, “Not the view though,” His smile fades, “All you see is the tarmac and the concrete.”

Minho is listening but not as much as he’s watching. Newt was sure if he gave the choice to the man he’d rather pierce his eardrums than gouge out his eyes. Although, Newt supposed if the opportunity were ever to present itself, if Minho was given a knife and the desire to do something, he’s opt for ripping out Newt’s vocal cords.

“No,” Newt tells the silence, “I don’t like the view.” He takes of his shirt next, not even bothering to cringe as his ribcage and scars are exposed to the other man. “I like the countryside, the grass, the green.” He unzips his trousers, “I like the wind and the fresh scent in the air.” Newt takes of his boxers, “I don’t like the city.”

His nakedness, while evident, seems masked by his haze of words, Minho feeling everything he shouldn’t be, everything that isn’t arousal or desire or the will to fuck the blonde. But it’s the anger and resentment over everything in the room that pulls Minho back to his objective.

Minho pulls his shirt over his head, the expanse of his muscles and beauty not dimmed by the lack of lighting. He looks strong and handsome and everything he’s not, and Newt’s okay with that because he likes change and he likes playing pretend.

He takes the condom out of his jean pocket and places it down with an unexpected lightness beside Newt. The blonde watches him move, watches him undress completely, his scowl and the cowardice behind his nakedness.

Minho Park is naked and Newt likes that, likes that the man has nothing left to hide behind but somehow, still manages to. He likes that Minho Park is like him, that this version of Minho and this version of himself are nothings and shameful in the eyes of God (if such a thing were to exist of course, and if such a thing were to watch them now).

Newt leans back into the mattress, spreading his legs wide, watching the runner bite his lip and push them apart faster.

“On your back,” Minho tells him, looking at his body and not his eyes like he’s supposed to be.

He follows the request, sitting on his knees and presenting himself to the undeniable grace that was Minho Park.

Newt can hear the man open the condom packet, hear him stroke his dick to full hardness and slip the condom on. He half waits for a question of consent, for a warning or a clarification, he wills the silence to break yet for it to remain the same. But no such kindness exists in the man or the world, so Minho Park just enters him in one dry and merciless thrust.

The blonde smiles as he bites into the pillow, his eyes watering and grip tightening.

Minho Park makes him feel alive, and Newt thanks him for it.

The man’s breath ghost itself across his ear, the grunts and slaps sounding into the room like the sin that they are. Minho’s cock inside him is relentless, the size brutally assaulting his walls in the most cherished and pleasurable of ways. Strong hands grasp Newt’s hips and soon enough his body begins to rock against the thrusts giving Newt enough of an excuse to start thrusting back.

A particular well aimed thrust as Newt screaming into the pillow. He isn’t quite sure if it’s in pleasure or in pleading, begging the man to stop or slow down. He isn’t quite sure which scares him the most.

Newt expects a degree of ignorance in Minho’s movements, expects a virgin blush and a tense agitation while his confidence crumbles under the pressure of his inexperience. But Newt is disappointed, he misses the vulnerabilities he’s sure exists, like the stars and the others and the universes constant will to fuck him over. He dreams of that side of Minho, the messy and vulnerable side that the man so desperately tries to sew back together. He wants to watch the threads loosen, for the man to be naked in front of him while his soul is revealed, so ugly and foul that Newt forgets what it’s like to see beauty.

Minho’s thrusts are strong, his pace experienced in a way that tells Newt that the man has done this before. For some reason the thought refuses to settle, Newt’s disbelief too strong for him to notice the cracks in his judgements. Minho Park tricked him, Minho Park used him. And Newt loves it.

Strong hands grab Newt’s waist, lifting him up until he sits on the man’s cock. But he isn’t in control, this is no different, Minho manipulates every movement, dominates his small form with his authority as he breaks Newt apart with his movements. And just when Newt doubts that Minho Park is simple a man, simply a customer that uses him, Minho grabs his length and begins to stroke him.

Newt isn’t hard, he never is. Over the years of selling his body for money he had become desensitised to the passion, recognising the act for what is truly was, just two bodies rutting against one another. If he were a romanticist or a poet he’d call it an art form, but it’s far too choppy and far too private to belong in such a category.

And Minho can tell that, can read everything that Newt is without even trying because he’s just that fucking omniscient. The man’s mind is broken for a second, fuelled by self-doubt before he tricks himself with synthetic confidence and starts stroking Newt’s length.

Newt whimpers and he isn’t quite sure whether it’s in pleasure or fear in what Minho has amounted to. But pain and pleasure lose their meanings, he doesn’t categorise the feeling because he doesn’t need to, he just needs to let it happen.

He wants Minho to stop just as much as he wants him to fuck harder and faster.

The man continues to fuck his body, thrusting out with a primal emotion that is not passion and is not violence, only the abundance of the two.

He’s hard, Newt realises, the thought a typhoon of numbness washing over his form. It feels like he isn’t there, that this isn’t happening, like he’s watching it happen with a notebook and pen and writing a paper on what it’s like to be fucked by something that’s both nothing and everything at once.

Minho Park casts himself on his sickly skin, his breath warming him and hand relentlessly firm on his cock. Minho is telling him, like Newt’s the prophet and the almighty, the omnipotent, the everything, that he is here and he is unlike everyone else. He is unlike anyone else, he’s touching Newt like no one’s ever touched him before, wanting the blonde to come so he can smirk and tell him he’s better than anything he ever believed himself to be.

His thrusts get faster, gravity pulling Newt into the sensation until he succumbs to a state of moans and pleas. He is desperate, he is soiling the already soiled grounds of his purity.

Minho pulls his hair, forcing his head to slam into his neck so he can watch him, so he can look into the darkness of Minho’s eyes and see it all. For a moment Newt fears the man will kiss him, that he’ll breach the boundaries of business and do something stupid like tell Newt he’s beautiful and perfect. He thinks a Minho will lie to him, will put him on a pedestal that Newt has taken much time in destroying over the years.

But he doesn’t.

Instead he just thrusts, looking into Newt’s eyes with a casual whimsy of sadism, stroking him faster in will for the blonde to turn to liquid in his firm grasp.

Newt thrusts back into his body, moaning at the sensation of pleasure that leaves a bitter taste of unfamiliarity in his mouth. It burns like fire, the hands and the thickness inside of him spreading like an inferno he hopes will swallow him whole.

Minho squeezes the head of his cock, forcing Newt to spill his orgasm onto the bed, wanting to watch the blonde see what he had become, everything he had amounted to. But Newt for once doesn’t wince, doesn’t hate himself for coming of giving into the tedious desire. He feels born again, feels stronger than ever before. The feeling lasts a mere few seconds, minutes if he felt the need to exaggerate, before he looks at his reflection in the mirror to his left and sees the hollowness, the poverty, the ugly scars of his body. He watches Minho fuck him, watches him hold him tightly and lose himself into the warmth that’s his body

The man pushes him back down on the mattress, stroking his hips softly in apology for the bruises as he pulls out. He takes of the condom, throws it to the floor and takes his length into his hand.

Newt watches Minho moan and curse, watches him cum across his back. He feels Minho’s presence, feels the beads of cum cool his red skin. And Minho looks beautiful in the darkness, looks like everything he dreamed he would be.

Minho Park looks sorry as he meets his eyes in the mirror.

“Are you okay?” He asks just so he can hear the only answer that follows such a question, just to reassure himself that he shouldn’t be guilty.

But Newt doesn’t reply like he should do, because Newt is a person that shouldn’t exist. He does not follow social restrictions because he is below them. “No,” Newt tells him, “But that was something you could never fix.”

Minho’s brow creases in confusion.

Newt stands up, bones creaking as he does so but his face doesn’t wince. Minho watches the boy wipe the semen off his back like it’s nothing, like it’s a simple part of his routine, although Minho supposes it is. He’s just another customer to the blonde, and now he’s waiting to get what he earned.

He moves to his discarded jeans and pulls out the money placing it on the bed side table. Newt dresses himself, covering up the bruises and the scars that sully the tapestry of his pale skin. He turns to Minho and the money with a small and plastered on smile.

Before Minho can stop himself he’s speaking, his words sounding crude and unwanted in the darkness. “Stay.”

Newt winces, his eyes tell Minho all he needs to know.

There is no love in Minho’s words, but they don’t echo. There is no love because both of them know no such thing exists, the word is a concept that has lost its meaning, a lie like the Easter bunny and angels and heaven and all those things you tell to a child to prevent them from realising the darkness and the evil. Minho doesn’t love Newt and Newt doesn’t love Minho, but Minho was sure there was something else. He wants to hear the blonde speak, wants him to tell him the stories of the sin and the dirt, ask him what it’s like to be so small and what it’s like to feel so desperate.

He wants Newt to stay because he’s like him, in a cruel yet amusing way the two of them are difference sides of the same coin. Minho is shiny and gold plated but Newt is the rusty bronze that only shines when the world tells him to. Minho doesn’t want Newt to leave because then he’ll be alone, and at least now in this moment he’s lonely in the presence of loneliness itself.

“Nothing else,” Minho continues, “Just stay for the night. The rooms paid for already and it’s late. At least for one night you can pretend everything isn’t shitty.”

Newt watches him speak, like he’s learning the words to recite to himself later, like a prayer and a passage that exists just to he believed in.

The blonde looks to the money before he looks back at him. “I can’t,” He dismisses, “I need the money.”

“It’s three o’clock at night, no one’s going to be looking for a prostitute this late,” Minho tells him.

Newt leans against the door, “I can’t take that chance.”

“Fine,” Minho exclaims, “I’ll pay you, just stay.”

The blonde looks like a doe, eyes wide and deep and curious. He looks younger in the light that cast itself from the hallway.

Minho waits to hear him take the money and walk away, waits for the silence and the emptiness that exists in everything he ever does.

But Newt surprises him with words, “Fine.”

Newt doesn’t undress, simply slips under the covers and turns to face the wall. Minho watches him settle, waits to hear his breath even with sleep before he two turns to face the other way.

Their dreams are their escape.

 

* * *

 

 

Minho isn’t there when Newt wakes up, and he doesn’t expect him to be. The side of his bed is creased in perfect silhouette of the man’s body, but it too had grown cold like it never existed in the first place.

It takes a moment for Newt to register the morning, to fall back into the dreams of tomorrows and change. His eyes widen, heart clenching before he sees the payment on his bedside table. It’s more money than there should be, a quick count sums up to at least a thousand pounds. The notes are heavy in his hands, the sensation feeling pitiful and Newt didn’t like pity because it suggested he was something small and weak and kickable. The act of pity gave a sense of entitlement, one Newt knew Minho already possessed.

A small handwritten note sits underneath the money, handwriting rushed and untidy. _‘I paid for everything in the mini fridge,’_ the note read _, ‘put some meat on your bones and have a shower.’_

He does not leave a kiss, doesn’t leave his name or try and reference Newt in anyway. And he’s glad, almost like Minho understood what he wanted, what he needed.

Minho Park in not just a man, not the prodigy and most certainly isn’t perfect. Minho Park is like him, broken, and that was all Newt needed to get out of bed.

To humour himself he turns the television on in the hotel room, the picture far clearer than his one at home. For a moment Newt questions his eyes, wonders if perhaps he was seeing things or at least tricking himself into seeing what he wanted to, because Minho Park is on the television, handsome as ever and biting his lip like he did something wrong. If Newt were shallow enough he’d say the guilt was aimed at him, but he knew deep inside his heart that the man had already forgotten his existence.

The woman, Theresa, was there as well, smiling and talking to the camera. Her smile is too tight and bright to seem real, Minho’s shadowed expression dimming nothing but the passion in her eyes. On her hand is a diamond ring. People surround the couple and congratulate them on their engagement, asking for Minho to share words of love and lies that they all recycle in their minds.

Minho looks at the camera, at Newt, and he speaks of the love and the happiness and the fulfillment that resides in nothing but the hollowness of the words.

Newt turns the television off and smiles. He takes the food out the mini-fridge and pockets the money, not looking back when the door closes behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for the out-of-character-ness of this story and the unsexiest sex scene that ever existed, this story kind of happened, and I thought I’d share it with you guys. Thank you so much for reading, any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.


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